Perceptual Priming Research Articles

Semantic versus perceptual priming: dissecting their impact on intuitive judgments of semantic coherence.

This research explores the mechanisms underlying the intuitive processing of semantic coherence, focusing on the effects of semantic and perceptual priming on semantic coherence detection. Two studies examined how these priming types influence individuals' abilities to discern semantic incoherence. In Study 1, we used solutions to semantically coherent triads as primes, finding that such priming significantly improves participants' accuracy and confidence in identifying incoherent elements within word tetrads. These results corroborate the hypothesis that intuitive judgments in linguistic tasks are closely tied to the processing fluency elicited by semantic connections. In Study 2, we show that perceptual priming does not significantly enhance accuracy, albeit it does increase the confidence with which individuals make their judgments. Distinct effects of semantic and perceptual priming on intuitive judgments highlight the complex interplay between processing fluency and affect in shaping intuitive judgments of semantic coherence. We discuss the nuanced roles of semantic and perceptual factors in influencing the accuracy and confidence of intuitive decisions.

Priming effect of individual similarity and ensemble perception in visual search and working memory.

Perceptual priming is a well-known phenomenon showing that the repetition of an object's feature can facilitate subsequent detection of that item. Although the priming effect has been rigorously studied in visual search, less is known about its effect on working memory and it is unclear whether the repetition of similar features, and furthermore, ensemble perception created by a large set of similar features, can induce priming. In this study, we investigated the priming effects of individual similarity and ensemble perception in visual search and visual working memory (VWM). We replicated the classic perceptual priming effect (Experiment 1a) and found that visual search was enhanced when the current target had a similar color to the previous target (Experiment 1b), but not when the similar color had been shown as a distractor before (Experiment 1c). However, if the target and distractors of similar colors formed ensemble perception, the search efficiency was again promoted even when the current target shared the same color with the previous distractor (Experiment 1d). For VWM, repeating the ensembles of the target- and nontarget-color subsets did not significantly affect the memory capacity, while switching the two harmed the memory fidelity but not capacity (Experiment 2). We suggest different underlying mechanisms for priming in visual search and VWM: in the former, the perception history of individual similarity and stimuli ensemble exert their effects on through the priority map, by forming a gradient distribution of attentional weights that peak at the previous target feature and diminish as stimulus diverges from the previously selected one; while in the latter, perception history of memory ensemble may influence the deployment of existing memory resources across trials, thereby affecting the memory fidelity but not its capacity.

62 Repetition priming of novel geometric shapes is associated with cortical arousal in young adults but spatial attention in older adults

Objective:Repetition priming is a form of implicit memory in which prior exposure to a stimulus facilitates the subsequent processing of that stimulus. While explicit memory has consistently been shown to decline with age, the effect of age on implicit memory remains unresolved. Most studies examining age-related effects on priming have utilized words or pictures of real objects with pre-existing representations that may differentially involve implicit and explicit memory processes across age groups. Repetition priming may also be influenced by attentional processes during encoding that are differentially affected by age. In a previous study using word-stem completion, we found that individual differences in cortical arousal, but not spatial attention, influenced the magnitude and temporal dynamics of conceptual priming in healthy older adults. The objective of this study is to investigate whether cortical arousal and spatial attention play differential roles in the magnitude and temporal dynamics of repetition priming in young and older adults using novel shapes that do not have pre-existing representations within memory.Participants and Methods:Healthy young (n=25, M age=19.4) and older adults (n=54, M age=70.0) completed a perceptual repetition priming task that was followed by a recognition memory test and an alerting/spatial orienting task from which behavioral measures of cortical arousal and spatial attention were derived. Older adults also completed a battery of neuropsychological tests. In the perceptual priming task, participants made a speeded judgment on whether novel nonverbal shapes had “closed” or “open” perimeters. Each shape was presented twice: half following the first presentation (immediate repetition) and half after three intervening items (delayed repetition). Participants were then shown closed and open versions of each shape and asked to identify which version was presented in the previous task. In the alerting/orienting task, participants made a speeded response to the location of a visual target; on a subset of trials, either nonspatial alerting or spatial orienting cues were presented 300ms prior to the target.Results:Response times were slower and judgment accuracy greater in older adults (ps<0.05). However, the groups showed comparable levels of immediate and delayed repetition priming along with chance levels of recognition memory accuracy. Cortical arousal was reduced (p<0.001) and costs associated with spatial attention were larger (p<0.01) in the older adults. Despite comparable priming, cortical arousal and spatial attention were differentially related to priming across groups. In the young group, lower cortical arousal was associated with greater delayed priming (r=-.47, p=0.017) and slower decay rate (r=.44, p=0.03). In the older group, higher cost of spatial orienting was associated with greater immediate priming (r=.40, p=0.003) and faster decay rate (r=.29, p=0.03). Better category fluency performance was also associated with greater immediate priming (r=.32, p=0.035) and faster decay rate (r=.34, p=0.025) in older adults.Conclusions:These findings suggest that different attentional systems support repetition priming across age groups. Priming is modulated by the efficiency of cortical arousal in young adults, but by the costs of spatial attention in older adults with reduced cortical arousal, consistent with a shift from bottom-up to top-down attentional processes and broader attentional scope with age.

Predictive and perceptual phonemic processing in articulatory motor areas: A prediction potential & mismatch negativity study

The recent finding of predictive brain signals preceding anticipated perceptual and linguistic stimuli opens new questions for experimental research. Here, we address the possible brain basis of phonological predictions regarding the features of specific speech sounds and their relationship to phonological priming. To this end, we recorded EEG correlates of both pre- and post-stimulus brain responses in a phonological priming study. Redundant spoken sounds induced stimulus expectations, which manifested as a slow-wave anticipatory activity (the Prediction Potential, PP), whereas articulatory-congruent (e.g.,/bƏ/in the context of expected/pƏ/) pairs elicited weaker post-stimulus MMN-like responses as compared to the articulatory-incongruent (e.g.,/bƏ/in the context of expected/dƏ/) pairs, a pattern reminiscent of perceptual priming mediated by articulatory-motor areas. Source analysis reveal clusters of activation in lateral prefrontal, temporal and ventral motor areas, thus providing the proof of the relevance of multimodal representation units subserving predictive and perceptual phonemic processing.

The Effect of Different Attentional Operations at Encoding Stage on Perceptual Priming

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Matter over mind: Effects of imagery and perceptual priming on visual attention

Matter over mind: Effects of imagery and perceptual priming on visual attention

The role of high-order statistics in evoking perceptual priming effect on rapid scene categorization

The role of high-order statistics in evoking perceptual priming effect on rapid scene categorization

The steady-state visual evoked potential (SSVEP) reflects the activation of cortical object representations: evidence from semantic stimulus repetition

We applied high-density EEG to examine steady-state visual evoked potentials (SSVEPs) during a perceptual/semantic stimulus repetition design. SSVEPs are evoked oscillatory cortical responses at the same frequency as visual stimuli flickered at this frequency. In repetition designs, stimuli are presented twice with the repetition being task irrelevant. The cortical processing of the second stimulus is commonly characterized by decreased neuronal activity (repetition suppression). The behavioral consequences of stimulus repetition were examined in a companion reaction time pre-study using the same experimental design as the EEG study. During the first presentation of a stimulus, we confronted participants with drawings of familiar object images or object words, respectively. The second stimulus was either a repetition of the same object image (perceptual repetition; PR) or an image depicting the word presented during the first presentation (semantic repetition; SR)—all flickered at 15 Hz to elicit SSVEPs. The behavioral study revealed priming effects in both experimental conditions (PR and SR). In the EEG, PR was associated with repetition suppression of SSVEP amplitudes at left occipital and repetition enhancement at left temporal electrodes. In contrast, SR was associated with SSVEP suppression at left occipital and central electrodes originating in bilateral postcentral and occipital gyri, right middle frontal and right temporal gyrus. The conclusion of the presented study is twofold. First, SSVEP amplitudes do not only index perceptual aspects of incoming sensory information but also semantic aspects of cortical object representation. Second, our electrophysiological findings can be interpreted as neuronal underpinnings of perceptual and semantic priming.

Perceptual Priming Can Increase or Decrease With Aging.

A decline in declarative or explicit memory has been extensively characterized in cognitive aging and is a hallmark of cognitive impairments. However, whether and how implicit perceptual memory varies with aging or cognitive impairment is unclear. Here, we compared implicit perceptual memory and explicit memory measures in three groups of participants: (1) 59 healthy young volunteers (20–30 years); (2) 269 healthy old volunteers (50–90 years) and (3) 21 patients with mild cognitive impairment, i.e., MCI (50–90 years). To measure explicit memory, participants were tested on standard recognition and recall tasks. To measure implicit perceptual memory, we used a classic perceptual priming paradigm. Participants had to report the shape of a visual search pop-out target whose color or position was varied randomly across trials. Perceptual priming was measured as the speedup in response time for targets that repeated in color or position. Our main findings are as follows: (1) Explicit memory was weaker in old compared to young participants, and in MCI patients compared to age- and education-matched controls; (2) Surprisingly, perceptual priming did not always decline with age: color priming was smaller in older participants but position priming was larger; (3) Position priming was less frequent in the MCI group compared to matched controls; (4) Perceptual priming and explicit memory were uncorrelated across participants. Thus, perceptual priming can increase or decrease with age or cognitive impairment, but these changes do not covary with explicit memory.

The relationship between perceptual priming and subsequent recognition memory: an event-related potential study.

This study investigated the relationship between perceptual priming and subsequent recognition memory using conceptually impoverished kaleidoscope images as stimuli. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded to explore the ERPs related to perceptual priming and their relationship with subsequent recognition memory. The results revealed that the early ERP perceptual priming effect between 100 and 300 ms, which might reflect perceptual fluency, was significant for both subsequent remembered and forgotten images. Both the latter ERP perceptual priming effects between 300-500 ms and 500-800 ms and the behavioral priming effect were significant for subsequent remembered images but not for subsequent forgotten images. These results indicated that brain activities between 300-500 ms and 500-800 ms could be predictive of both subsequent perceptual priming and recognition memory. Thus, the results of the present study demonstrate that perceptual priming and recognition memory share encoding factors.

Individual differences in the tendency to see the expected.

Prior knowledge has been shown to facilitate the incorporation of visual stimuli into awareness. We adopted an individual differences approach to explore whether a tendency to 'see the expected' is general or method-specific. We administered a binocular rivalry task and manipulated selective attention, as well as induced expectations via predictive context, self-generated imagery, expectancy cues, and perceptual priming. Most prior manipulations led to a facilitated awareness of the biased percept in binocular rivalry, whereas strong signal primes led to a suppressed awareness, i.e., adaptation. Correlations and factor analysis revealed that the facilitatory effect of priors on visual awareness is closely related to attentional control. We also investigated whether expectation-based biases predict perceptual abilities. Adaptation to strong primes predicted improved naturalistic change detection and the facilitatory effect of weak primes predicted the experience of perceptual anomalies. Taken together, our results indicate that the facilitatory effect of priors may be underpinned by an attentional mechanism but the tendency to 'see the expected' is method-specific.

Segregation, connectivity, and gradients of deactivation in neural correlates of evidence in social decision making

Functional imaging studies of sensory decision making have detected a signal associated with evidence for decisions that is consistent with data from single-cell recordings in laboratory animals. However, the generality of this finding and its implications on our understanding of the organization of the fMRI signal are not clear. In the present functional imaging study, we investigated decisions in an elementary social cognition domain to identify the neural correlates of evidence, their segregation, connectivity, and their relationship to task deactivations. Besides providing data in support of an evidence-related signal in a social cognition task, we were interested in embedding these neural correlates in models of supramodal associative cortex placed at the top of a hierarchy of processing areas. Participants were asked to decide which of two depicted individuals was saddest based on information rich in sensory features (facial expressions) or through contextual cues suggesting the mental state of others (stylized drawings of mourning individuals). The signal associated with evidence for the decision was located in two distinct networks differentially recruited depending on the information type. Using the largest peaks of the signal associated with evidence as seeds in a database of connectivity data, these two networks were retrieved. Furthermore, the hubs of these networks were located near or along a ribbon of cortex located between task activations and deactivations between areas affected by perceptual priming and the deactivated areas of the default network system. In associative cortex, these findings suggest gradients of progressive relative deactivation as a possible neural correlate of the cortical organization envisaged by structural models of cortical organization and by predictive coding theories of cortical function.

Priming perceptivo y percepción de amenaza en exposición a eventos traumáticos: un estudio exploratorio

Holmes y Rahe (1967) reconocen que las experiencias traumáticas son independientes de la valencia emocional del evento y la percepción de amenaza tiene incidencia en cómo son procesadas estas vivencias. Los estudios en priming perceptivo han identificado que personas con trastorno por estrés postraumático (TEPT) presentan ventajas en el procesamiento de información traumática, no obstante, no se ha explorado en población en ausencia de trastorno. El objetivo de esta investigación es explorar el priming en población sin TEPT y evaluar si se produce cuando se percibe amenaza. Se evaluaron 42 universitarios y se les pidió que describieran un suceso autobiográfico, positivo o traumático y el grado de amenaza percibida de dicho evento. Los resultados evidencian diferencias significativas en priming perceptivo en función de la percepción de amenaza del evento, F(2, 42) = 6.562, p = .004, ηp2 = .26, independientemente de la valencia de los hechos narrados. Se discuten las implicaciones de estos resultados en la línea de estudios de memoria implícita y trauma.

Local perception impairs the lexical reading route.

Human perception of a visual scene is hierarchically organized. Such rapid, albeit coarse, global processing allows people to create a useful context in which local details can be successively allocated. Lack of the typical hierarchical global-to-local visual processing is longitudinally predictive of future reading difficulties in pre-readers, which suggests that an atypical local perception can interfere with reading skill acquisition. Global and local Navon tasks were used to induce a transient perceptual priming before a reading-aloud task. We tested the effect of an atypical local perception on lexical and sublexical reading routes in typical adult readers. Local (vs. global) priming resulted in a slower phonological access to irregular, relative to regular, words. By contrast, pseudoword reading was not affected by local (vs. global) perceptual priming. Our findings demonstrate that, in typical adult readers, local priming impairs the fast processing of the letter string useful for lexical reading.

Consolidación de la memoria implícita: efecto de la valencia emocional y el tiempo de exposición mediante el uso de Priming perceptual

Se estudió el efecto de la valencia emocional y los tiempos de exposición en la consolidación de la memoria implícita mediante el uso del paradigma de priming perceptual enmascarado modificado, con reconocimiento de emociones bajo condiciones de consciencia limitada. Se presentaron rostros priming con expresiones emocionales de felicidad, rabia y neutro, en tiempos de exposición de 17ms, 33ms y 83 ms; posteriormente, los sujetos ejecutaron la tarea de memoria implícita, la cual consistía en recordar la emoción del rostro target de la primera tarea. Se encontraron diferencias estadísticamente significativas a nivel de la valencia emocional entre los diferentes tiempos de exposición en la tarea de procesamiento perceptual, en comparación con la tarea de consolidación de la memoria implícita a nivel de los tiempos de reacción. Igualmente, se encontraron diferencias estadísticamente significativas en los tiempos de exposición al comparar la tarea de procesamiento perceptual y la de consolidación de la memoria implícita. Los resultados obtenidos explican que existe una correlación entre las respuestas correctas de esta última tarea y las valencias emocionales, con cada uno de los tres tiempos de exposición. Estos resultados sugieren que las valencias emocionales influyen diferencialmente en las tareas de procesamiento perceptual y consolidación de la memoria implícita.

Semantic and perceptual priming activate partially overlapping brain networks as revealed by direct cortical recordings in humans

Facilitation of object processing in the brain due to a related context (priming) can be influenced by both semantic connections and perceptual similarity. It is thus important to discern these two when evaluating the spatio-temporal dynamics of primed object processing. The repetition-priming paradigm frequently used to study perceptual priming is, however, unable to differentiate between the mentioned priming effects, possibly leading to confounded results. In the current study, we recorded brain signals from the scalp and cerebral convexity of nine patients with refractory epilepsy in response to related and unrelated image-pairs, all of which shared perceptual features while only related ones had a semantic connection. While previous studies employing a repetition-priming paradigm observed largely overlapping networks between semantic and perceptual priming effects, our results suggest that this overlap is only partial (both temporally and spatially). These findings stress the importance of controlling for perceptual features when studying semantic priming.

Exposure to traumatic events and perceptual priming in forcedly displaced Colombian population in Ecuador

Los recientes estudios en priming perceptivo se han centrado en identificar las diferencias entre población con y sin Trastorno por Estrés Postraumático (TEPT) confirmando la hipótesis que el TEPT representa un trastorno de la memoria. En este trabajo, se pretende abordar el priming en personas que han estado expuestas a diversas experiencias traumáticas relacionadas con el desplazamiento forzado. Para ello se diseñaron tres categorías de palabras “trauma” (i.e., de amenaza, emocional y judicial) y una categoría de palabras “neutra”, las cuales compartían su raíz de tres letras en 44 colombianos refugiados y solicitantes de asilo que residen en Ecuador con presencia o ausencia de TEPT. Los resultados confirman que las personas con TEPT presentan mayor priming perceptivo en las categorías de amenaza y emociones y los solicitantes de asilo en la categoría judicial. Se discuten las implicaciones para los estudios que abordan el impacto de violencia política. In line with the hypothesis that PTSD is a memory disorder, recent studies on perceptual priming have focused on identifying the differences between population with and without Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). This study addresses priming in people who have been exposed to traumatic experiences of forced displacement. To that end, three categories of the word “trauma” (i.e., of threat, emotional and judicial) and a category of “neutral” words, which shared their three-letter root were chosen. The participants were 44 Colombian refugees and asylum seekers living in Ecuador with or without PTSD. The results of our study point that people with PTSD have higher perceptual priming in the threat and emotional categories, and asylum seekers show higher priming in the judicial category. The implications for studies that address the impact of political violence are discussed.

Masking procedures can influence priming effects besides their effects on conscious perception.

Masked priming has been employed to study the role of consciousness for different levels of visual processing. However, masking procedures differ systematically between studies. To examine these procedural differences we contrasted priming effects with metacontrast masking, which is often applied in the context of perceptual priming, and priming effects with sandwich pattern masking, frequently used in studies on semantic priming. Results indicate that the amount of masking neither affects perceptual nor semantic priming effects in a semantic categorization task when a metacontrast masking paradigm was used. However, perceptual and semantic priming effects increased with increasing prime visibility when a sandwich pattern masking paradigm was used. Findings suggest that different types of masking procedures affect the processing of the masked stimuli in substantially different ways even if the masking effect on conscious perception of these stimuli is comparable.

Expectations and perceptual priming in a visual search task: Evidence from eye movements and behavior.

An extensive amount of research indicates that repeating target and distractor features facilitates pop-out search while switching these features slows the search. Following the seminal study by Maljkovic and Nakayama (1994), this "priming of pop-out" effect (PoP) has been widely described as an automatic bottom-up process that is independent of the observers' expectations. At the same time, numerous studies highlight the crucial role of expectations in visual attention deployment. Our experiment shows that in contrast to previous claims, PoP in a classic color singleton search task is a mix of automatic processing and expectations. Participants searched for a uniquely colored diamond among 2 same-colored distractors. Target color sequences were either predictable (e.g., 2 red-target-green-distractors trials, followed by 2 green-target-red-distractors trials, and so on) or random. Responses were faster in predictable color sequences than randomly changing ones with equal number of repetitions of target colors on preceding trials. Analyses of observers' eye movements showed that predictability of target color affected both latency and accuracy of the first saccade during a search trial. Our results support the idea that PoP is governed not only by automatic effects from previous target or distractor features but also by top-down expectations. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Supplemental Material for Expectations and Perceptual Priming in a Visual Search Task: Evidence From Eye Movements and Behavior

Supplemental Material for Expectations and Perceptual Priming in a Visual Search Task: Evidence From Eye Movements and Behavior